2009 review, 2010 preview

In the spirit of the new year, here's a quick year-end review and year-ahead preview.

Looking back on 2009

Between the improvements that came from your fantastic feedback and the new features that came from our R&D team, the list of changes was huge!

The biggest change was the release of reQall Pro, with major improvements such as the Here and Now page, locations, Google Calendar integration, Outlook integration, add by email and reply by email. At the same time both Pro and reQall Standard were updated to add recurring dates, sharing with non-reQall users, integrating with your iPhone/BlackBerry contacts, and call/email/browse from your items. Some other changes in ’09:

• reQall for iPhone got push notifications, maps of your items, creating Places from the map, recording on the iPod Touch, and eyes-free recording.
• reQall for Blackberry now provides real-time location-based reminders, an offline mode, an automated connection setting, and support for locations on Verizon Storms/Tours (many thanks again to reQall user Maxx for helping on this).
• On the web, the 3^rd party contact import code was completely replaced, and the Memory Jogger pages were added.
• All 3 major platforms were updated to include Evernote integration.
• Outlook integration got a lot of attention with support for Exchange, Outlook 2000/2002, 64 bit platforms, setting reminders and two-way sync.
• Keyword recognition was changed to add extra words, recognize your places and allow you to strip keywords.
• We replaced our computer transcription software with Yap, which provides a much better automated transcript.
• There were many other changes that you requested, such as changing the subjects of reminders, adding Canadian numbers, changing the distance for location notifications, supporting new browser versions like Firefox 3.5, etc.

Looking ahead to 2010

As you can see from everything we created in 2009, our goal is to take the strain off you and let reQall handle it! This is our mantra for 2010—we’re going to be releasing more upgrades and features within reQall, all of which are designed to make your life easier.

This is why our main focus is on a new user interface. We’ve gotten feedback from you and from Don Norman, our Chief Mentor, on ways we can improve the interface to both make it simpler AND give you more control. We also found that the existing interface couldn’t easily handle some of the new capability we’re working on, like categories and tagging.  This new interface should be available in Q1 on the iPhone and Web. We’ll then put it on the BlackBerry.

We'll also start on our next high-priority item—reQall for Android. We know many of you want this yesterday, and we wish it were available. We’re driving to get it done as quickly as possible and will come back with an expected release date.

Other than these 2 specific items, our focus for the first half of 2010 is on making reQall even more intelligent. We’ll be doing more with locations and with helping you to take action on your to-do’s. Our chief brain, Sunil Vemuri, has a major new feature coming so that more than ever you can let reQall handle it. We’ll let you know about this soon and get some of you to try it.

Like any fantastic group of users, you’ve given us many more things to do. For some requests, we’re waiting on others, like any-time location alerts on the iPhone (Apple needs to allow apps to run in the background) and BB OS 5.0 support (RIM needs to release the 5.0 SDK). The list of your requests is too long to get everything done this year, but we do have many things queued for the first 6 months of 2010.

Thank you for 2009, and we wish you the very best for 2010. We’ll be working for you throughout the year, so please don’t forget - let reQall handle it!

 

Comments

[Annie-May]

Thanks for the recap on 2009 and for a glimpse into the future.

I'm sure Reqall will go from strength to strength in 2010. It's a cool service and it can only keep getting better and better.

I'm just hoping you'll make it more GTD compliant. At the moment it acts an AMAZING collection bucket - the best I've ever found - but it struggles a bit when trying to sort the tasks out. For example, there's no Someday/Maybe option, and then there's crazy quirks like shopping list items appearing in that days todo list. What's that about?

Finally, I just hope you don't spend too much time working in the location aware stuff as I reckon most people don't bother to use that stuff. Developers think it is cool and so spend forever building into apps, but only 3% of the apps users are interested in it.

I reckon if you do a survey of your users you'll be SHOCKED to find out hardly anyone bothers with the GPS stuff for several reasons.

1. Almost all their tasks are done in ONE location (work).

2. Having GPS on drains the battery.

3. We're clever enough to know that if we're in Wal-Mart we can buy things that Wal-Mart sells. We don't need a task to pop up telling us to get bread when we walking into the bakers for the simple reason that we wouldn't be walking into the bakers shop if we didn't need bread :-)

4. Most users are too busy to enter all that stuff in.

I, personally, think Reqalls strengths lie elsewhere and that your time would be better spent on what your USERS REALLY want in the app and not on what you THINK the users want in the app.

That said, I love my Reqall to bits and it has - in all honesty - revolutionized how I get things done, and I know that thanks to you guys 2010 will be an amazingly productive year for me.

Keep up the great work!!!!!!!!!

[Elaine Kiziah]

Any estimate on when the Android ap is likely to be available? You're right -- there are many of us chomping at the bit for this! :)

[Robert Kennedy]

Great product. I work in IT, as a technical writer, and I'm disappointed in the following.

+ No Link to this Blog from the Home Page (One has to dig to find it -- please post a prominent link on the home page!)

+ No release notes available, not prior or after updating software from my phone. Not, apparently, on this Web site. Why hide this?

Would be very interested in your feedback.
Keep up the wonderful work.

Bobby Kennedy

[Deb Miller]

Thanks for the comments, Bobby. You're right on both of these. The link to the Blog needs to be more prominent--we're planning to fix that in the next revision of the website.

Regarding release notes, we're creating a new "FAQ/Release Notes" blog where we'll post this type of info. We've tried various other forms in the past (help docs, web pages, posts on GetSatisfaction, etc) and the media gets in the way of updating the content. As a result, everything gets out of date very quickly. The plan is to have that blog up and going with the new interface release (or sooner if I can get to it--just not enough hours in the day :-).

[Robert Kennedy]

Deb,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. I have to admit to some cynical "aol-itis" about technology companies' responsiveness to customers. Thanks for chipping away at that.

I'm so tied to this app that it influences which new phone I plan to buy. Thank you!

Bobby

[Matthew Reddick]

I disagree with Annie-May. I specifically want a tool that will be always on, and notify me of things when I am near a location. I may be going to the bakery at Walmart to get bread, but I have forgotten that I wanted to checkout how much it would cost me to replace my tires. I'd like to be reminded of my agenda with my ex as I'm pulling up to pick up my daughter at her house. I'd love to be reminded that I need to talk to a co-worker on a subject the moment I walk in the door. I realize that the iPhone is not setup to do this mostly due to not being able to run applications in the background, but jailbreaking allows backgrounding of apps. I use it constantly and find it extremely useful. I don't mind the GPS battery drain that this type opf feature would cause because I keep my phone charged most of the time and have battery backups when I need them. For those of us that need this functionality, we can't find it in any other tool and want Reqall to be the tool that provides this for us.

[Panos]

I wonder, how do you receive push notifications, apart from the e-mail notice. Am I missing something ?
I mentioned before to your support people that if you type in Greek (on the iphone), what you receive in the web app or email is not Greek anymore. Is there any progress in other languages handling of your app ?

Thanks in advance.

[Jessi]

Hi Panos, our push notifications are a reQall Pro exclusive. To enable your push notifications from your iPhone please go to your main Settings-> Notifications-> ON, reQall-> ON.

I believe that our team is still working on the issue with transposing characters. Since you have sent an email to our support team, we keep track of your email address and update with any changes made to this issue.

Enjoy your reQall!

[Dave April]

>The list of your requests is too long to get
>everything done this year, but we do have
>many things queued for the first 6 months of
>2010.

If you would consider releasing an API, we could help out with the TODO list...

[Deb Miller]

We're working on an API As well, Dave.

[Nadine Husain]

Hi there, thanks very much for this update. we have reached end of Q1, would you mind updating us on the categories capabilities (very much looking forward to this for outlook).

I also want to chime in to say, i absolutely need an app that works for work, personal and everything in between. there are enough apps out there that sync only for work. this tool is great precisely because it does places so well, congrats!!

...now if only it could see with categories in outlook (since i use mine as "places").

thanks!

[Deb Miller]

The categories capability is currently in beta test on the Web and iPhone. If you'd like to participate in the beta test, please send a note to support@reqall.com.

[Jason]

When can we expect to see integration of "Reqall for Outlook" w/ Outlook 2010?

[Rental]

Interesting site, always a new topic .. good luck in the new 2011. Happy New Year!

[Hotjobs]

Hi Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, a cool site I like

[Nike Shox Cheap]

Was looking for this – so I just tweeted your website on our account – THANKS!!!

[single parents dating]

This theme has interested me! Finally, I just hope you don't spend too much time working in the location aware stuff as I reckon most people don't bother to use that stuff. Developers think it is cool and so spend forever building into apps, but only 3% of the apps users are interested in it.

[Doudoune Moncler Pas Cher]

very nice site for me. thanks!

[Camarad]

A good blog! I, personally, think Reqalls strengths lie elsewhere and that your time would be better spent on what your USERS REALLY want in the app and not on what you THINK the users want in the app.

[Paul Rudd]

This theme has interested me! reQall for Blackberry now provides real-time location-based reminders, an offline mode, an automated connection setting, and support for locations on Verizon Storms/Tours (many thanks again to reQall user Maxx for helping on this).